My Christmas presentations: A funny wrap-up
31st Jan 2011
To say that I was looking forward to a break over Christmas and into January is an understatement, but fate had other plans for me.
On the eve of our trip overseas, my son had a spontaneous pneumothorax requiring surgery which quickly threw our holiday into disarray.
He was on the mend and with the hospital up the road, I decided I might as well work through the holiday period.
Now, Kings Cross is always an edgy place, but it takes on a new frisson of excitement over Christmas.
Mine was the only practice open here and, with no receptionist, I fully expected a challenge opening up for four hours a day over all the public holidays.
Nothing prepared me for the strange and unusual presentations I engaged.
Backpackers were stuck in Sydney unable to head to Queensland due to the floods and a few meandered into my waiting room on Christmas Day.
A young woman from London was obviously suffering a fever and a deep resonant cough. She had slept on the floor in Heathrow for four days in freezing conditions and proceeded to develop fulminant pneumonia on her flight to Sydney. She was now headed for the emergency department at St Vincent’s for a holiday detour.
Trans-sexuality is common in my bailiwick but a middle-aged woman I had not seen for four years presented me with a special festive season challenge.
On Christmas Day she decided that I should complete the documentation to change her gender legally to a woman.
The paperwork was complicated and required that I visually check to ensure she no longer just dressed like a woman but in fact had undergone a surgical procedure that was irrevocable. It was.
We needed a justice of the peace to countersign her gender reassignment. None was available. She left in an agitated state muttering to herself.
Sexual activity was soon firmly on the agenda. Two young men describe their Christmas Eve in glowing terms but confided sheepishly that in their inebriated state, sex had occurred without protection.
Seeming to need each other for support, they told me they could not remember the women they had been with. Could I check for a barrage of sexually transmitted infections?
Of course, the pathology lab was closed and all I could do was suggest they return on Boxing Day.
They, too, became restive.
By now I was pondering the wisdom of opening my practice doors. An assortment of middle-aged tourists then plagued me with requests for scripts of medication they had left at home. Antihypertensives, sleeping tablets and thyroid hormones were the orders of the day.
My last patient was a drug user who wanted to be straight for the new year and requested that I facilitate his detox over the next six days. He was heading up the coast to his parents and had to be straight or they would lock him out of the house again. A painful negotiation ensued with fruitless calls to detox centres. He left crestfallen.
As I organised myself to leave and cycle home through the by now quiet streets of Kings Cross, street people that I had seen over the last year wished me a happy Christmas and seemed amazed that a GP would be about.
“Go home, Doctor,” they yelled, holding aloft a 4 L cask of cheap plonk. One even offered to share some of his wine with me.
Working over these holidays was singularly entertaining, but even so, I reckon I’ll take Christmas 2011 off.
On the eve of our trip overseas, my son had a spontaneous pneumothorax requiring surgery which quickly threw our holiday into disarray.
He was on the mend and with the hospital up the road, I decided I might as well work through the holiday period.
Now, Kings Cross is always an edgy place, but it takes on a new frisson of excitement over Christmas.
Mine was the only practice open here and, with no receptionist, I fully expected a challenge opening up for four hours a day over all the public holidays.
Nothing prepared me for the strange and unusual presentations I engaged.
Backpackers were stuck in Sydney unable to head to Queensland due to the floods and a few meandered into my waiting room on Christmas Day.
A young woman from London was obviously suffering a fever and a deep resonant cough. She had slept on the floor in Heathrow for four days in freezing conditions and proceeded to develop fulminant pneumonia on her flight to Sydney. She was now headed for the emergency department at St Vincent’s for a holiday detour.
Trans-sexuality is common in my bailiwick but a middle-aged woman I had not seen for four years presented me with a special festive season challenge.
On Christmas Day she decided that I should complete the documentation to change her gender legally to a woman.
The paperwork was complicated and required that I visually check to ensure she no longer just dressed like a woman but in fact had undergone a surgical procedure that was irrevocable. It was.
We needed a justice of the peace to countersign her gender reassignment. None was available. She left in an agitated state muttering to herself.
Sexual activity was soon firmly on the agenda. Two young men describe their Christmas Eve in glowing terms but confided sheepishly that in their inebriated state, sex had occurred without protection.
Seeming to need each other for support, they told me they could not remember the women they had been with. Could I check for a barrage of sexually transmitted infections?
Of course, the pathology lab was closed and all I could do was suggest they return on Boxing Day.
They, too, became restive.
By now I was pondering the wisdom of opening my practice doors. An assortment of middle-aged tourists then plagued me with requests for scripts of medication they had left at home. Antihypertensives, sleeping tablets and thyroid hormones were the orders of the day.
My last patient was a drug user who wanted to be straight for the new year and requested that I facilitate his detox over the next six days. He was heading up the coast to his parents and had to be straight or they would lock him out of the house again. A painful negotiation ensued with fruitless calls to detox centres. He left crestfallen.
As I organised myself to leave and cycle home through the by now quiet streets of Kings Cross, street people that I had seen over the last year wished me a happy Christmas and seemed amazed that a GP would be about.
“Go home, Doctor,” they yelled, holding aloft a 4 L cask of cheap plonk. One even offered to share some of his wine with me.
Working over these holidays was singularly entertaining, but even so, I reckon I’ll take Christmas 2011 off.
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